This week in the forest, the children have all shown a wonderful and exciting interest in all of the creepy crawlies they could find. They’ve been using magnifying glasses and bug pots to look closely at all the insects they found. The children knew that they like to be in their homes which are in the dark undergrowth under the logs around the forest and so would very carefully turn the logs over to look at them all. We counted out woodlice, snails, slugs, ants and millipedes. Some of the children even held the bugs very carefully in their hands, telling us how much they tickle as the crawled across them. We then thought about how if someone took the roof off of our house, we would want them to put it back and so we made sure each of the logs we turned over were put back for the insects to stay in.
As the week went on and the children’s interests deepened for the insects, we got a picture guide of minibeasts for the children to match the bugs they find to it. We’ve been searching high and low for butterflies, bumble bees, flies, ants, beetles and woodlice to tick off all of the pictures. Sadly, there were two minibeasts that we were just not able to find in our forest, one of which being a scorpion. We explained to the children that we wouldn’t find a scorpion in the forest as the yellow tailed scorpion in the UK likes to live near docks and beaches, to which our children showed perseverance in wanting to find them by saying “We shall never give up looking as that’s when we won’t find one”. Some of the other children then decided to help their friend in search of a scorpion by drawing their own scorpions on some cardboard and cutting them out. They then hid their scorpions around the forest for the others to find. The children then decided to draw other minibeasts that they were unlikely to find in the forest for their friends, such as a giant tarantula. Then we started hatching some pretend spiders from cardboard eggs to care for them and make them a home under some logs.
Keeping in with the theme of looking after animals, this week our mud kitchen area has become a home of all different pets. The children have been pretending to cook and clean the mud kitchen all while looking after their pet dogs and giraffes! They had tyres which had strings tied around them as leads and would walk them all around the forest, calling out their pets’ name. Then they would take them back to their elaborate houses complete with a door they could open and close by lifting the stick up. Inside their house the children used crates to make tables and chairs and mixed up some yummy soups and cupcakes to give to their friends and pets in the house. They explored mixing water, mud and leaves to create their concoctions and would use a ladle to share their food out to others as well as their pets. The children even told the educators how careful and gentle they had to be to stroke the animals otherwise we might hurt them or scare them.
The children have also made wonderful Doctors this week, taking care of all their patients. Red paint very quickly turned into blood and Xiao had to be taken to the pretend hospital in an ambulance. While the doctors and nurses examined Xiao and his wounds, others were covering him in yet more paint as he was getting even more poorly. Thankfully, tissues used as bandages saved Xiao’s life and all the paint was cleaned up meaning there was no more blood until the next day. We’ve also had the children raise legs up for x-rays and used special cameras to see inside our friend’s tummies as we gave them strawberry flavoured mud medicines in bottles with straws. The children have also been exploring how people get sick and talking to each other about their understandings of germs and how they grow inside you until the bad germs outnumber the good germs causing you to be poorly.
The eco-school council this week has been teaching the children all about recycling and how there are special bins to recycle. We separated out our rubbish into crates of cardboard, paper and plastic and the children were so strong in carrying the crates all the way out of the forest to the community recycling bin down the road. The children were so excited to put their separated recycled piles into the bins and have already been asking if we can go again.
We hope you all have had wonderful weeks and we wish everyone happy weekends!
Little Forest Folk
Twickenham